I quietly pad downstairs and hook my phone up to the speakers, turning the volume down but needing the noise after the silence of my confinement. I pause as I realise with a start that I am now more like the guys than I was before. We can’t stand the silence, needing music to drown out the demons that threaten to take over and pull us under. How fucked up is it that it’s our trauma that binds us? That the people who were meant to take care of us scarred us instead so badly that we had to take refuge in each other, our broken pieces fitting together far better than our whole selves ever could.
Far From Homeby Sam Tinnesz begins to play, the song expressing how I felt for all those weeks, trapped and unable to escape my beautiful prison.
“Can’t sleep?” I hear from behind me, and I turn to see Kai standing there limned in the silvery moonlight that’s filtering in from the window. I asked them not to draw the curtains, needing to see the glittering night sky of Colorado to remind myself that I wasn’t in Wiltshire at my, I mean, Adrian's house.
“No, my mind is racing,” I confess in a whisper, wrapping my arms around myself even though the air is warm. I’ve a feeling that this isn’t the kind of cold that a warm jumper will be able to fix.
“A wise and beautiful, young woman once convinced me that keeping things bottled up would only allow them to fester,” Kai says, his lips tipped up in a soft smile, and he steps towards me until his fresh woods after the rain scent caresses my nostrils. “Talk to me, darling.” The end of his words lilts up so that it’s almost a question, as if he doesn’t want to push me but knows that I need to spill out my troubles. I sigh, closing my eyes briefly. It makes the words easier to say somehow.
“I’m so fucking angry, Kai,” I grit out, my jaw tight and fists curled. I feel the flood of rage flow through my blood, making my heart pound like the sound of war drums. My eyes snap open, looking up into his eyes. “I’m spitting mad that all these men think that they can just do as they damn well please, taking and taking and never thinking about their own fucking evil. That what they are doing is wrong on so many bloody levels it’s obscene.”
My chest heaves, the frustration at everything and feeling so fucking powerless spilling over, sitting like oil on water coating everything in its path and suffocating all that is pure and good.
“My whole life has been dominated by men controlling it, and I’m just a fucking pawn being placed where they want me to be. Shit, even before I was born, I was running from a man!”
I move away, pacing as my hands run through my hair, but I can’t stop the flow of words that blurt out of me.
“M–my mum was killed because of a man. A man forced me to marry Ash. A man fucking kidnapped me. All because of what, Kai? Why do they think they can just take and take, never bothering to let me make my own choices?” I know I’m practically shouting now, tears streaming down my cheeks as I throw my hands wide, then drop them down at my sides, defeated. “I just want to be able to make my own decisions, choose my own destiny. Is that too much to ask?”
I turn to him, my shoulders slumped as I sob quietly, feeling so beaten.
“And the worst part?” I ask, looking up at him through blurry eyes. He just stands there, jaw working as if it’s taking a gargantuan effort not to rush over and hold me as I break. “It’s not over. They’re still out there. What fresh hell will be next, Kai?”
“Lilly—” he starts, losing the battle within himself and striding over to me, wrapping me up in his embrace and pulling me so close I can feel his pounding heart matching the rhythm of my own. “We are all fucking pawns to them, my darling,” he tells me, his own voice growling with frustration. He pulls back a little, placing a finger under my chin and raising it to meet his gaze. “But I swear to you on everything that I am, you will get your pound of flesh. You will be free, we all will.”
I stare up into his face, his eyes a savage amber flame with his vow.
“I liked hurting him, Kai,” I confess in a whisper, saying aloud what I’ve barely even admitted to myself. “I liked taking that gun and making him bleed.”
I watch his reaction intently, my heart racing for an entirely different reason now. What if, after all this time, this admission is too much? I’m not the same Lilly who walked into this dormitory less than a year ago, hurting but with clean hands. Yet if anyone can understand this craving for violence, it’s my dark Knights.
His beautiful mouth curves up into a smile that may give some men nightmares, but I relish in its depravity.
“That’s because you are a warrior queen, made to shed the blood of our enemies,” he tells me, a fierce pride in his tone as one hand comes up to stroke down the side of my face. “And you are perfect, Lilly Vanderbilt. Just right for us.”
A shiver runs down my spine at his words, my inner demon preening at his praise and acceptance.
After all, what better way to defeat the monsters that plague us than by becoming monstrous ourselves?
“Wait here,” Kai orders, placing a soft kiss on my cheek, his fingers trailing down my arm and leaving goosebumps in their wake. Anticipation swirls in my lower stomach as I watch him walk across the room and up the spiral staircase.
I hear quiet murmurs from upstairs, my breath speeding up when multiple footsteps start to descend the stairs. All four of my Knights alight at the bottom, Jax, Ash, and Loki looking deliciously sleep rumpled as they surround me in a wide circle.
It’s A Man’s Worldby Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Black Canary begins to play over the speakers, and I take in a deep inhale as one by one they all sink to their knees.
“Use us, Princess,” Ash says, his voice deep and husky, his tattooed chest bathed in moonlight.
“Take back control, Pretty Girl,” Loki adds, his eyes twinkling in the dark.
I swallow hard, my breath leaving my lungs in a shudder as I fill with love for these men, men who are all naturally alpha but are willing to set that aside to give me what I need right now. Reaching down, I pull my tank over my head, my nipples hardening underneath their heated gazes. Next, I shimmy out of my panties, and I relish in the sharp inhales that sound around me as I stand naked before them.
“She’s going to kill us,” Loki rasps under his breath, and a bark of delighted laughter leaves my lips.
“Nah, I like your cocks too much for that, Pretty Boy,” I sass him, and his lips tip up into a grin that turns salacious as I step towards him, running my fingers through his hair before grabbing a fistful and tugging his head back. “Lie back,”
Releasing my grip, he obeys, lying on his back with his head in the centre of the circle the others have created.
“Good boy,” I praise.